LOS ANGELES — The Lakers knew what they were about to face.
“The pressure and the fouling, three, four times on the possession that those teams do — because Phoenix plays a lot like [Oklahoma City] — it’s to get you sped up. It’s to get you disorganized,” Lakers coach J.J. Redick said pregame about the Suns’ defense, which entered the game averaging a league-leading 10.6 steals a game.
The Lakers got sped up and became disorganized. The result was 16 Suns steals on Monday night.
“We kind of stuck to what we do, though,” Suns coach Jordan Ott said. “I mean, if you play extremely hard, try to pressure, try to force turnovers, try to get the extra possessions to win the possession game, and we play fast — obviously we got out, the fast break points are 28 to 2 — but I thought even in the half court, our pace was pretty good. We just kept getting to the next action. Kept trying to move bodies offensively. And when you have 35 assists, that means we were doing some good things on that end.”
The Suns did a lot of things right on their way to a comfortable 125-108 win in the Lakers’ home. Here are three quick takeaways from the Phoenix victory.
Devon Booker out, Dillon Brooks steps up
The Suns came into the game shorthanded with their third leading scorer, Grayson Allen, out with an illness. Then, with two minutes remaining in the first quarter, leading scorer Devin Booker went to the bench and never re-entered the game due to a groin injury (Booker did come back and sit on the bench in street clothes; he will be examined tomorrow).
Without those two, Dylan Brooks stepped up with 33 points, including knocking down 10 in a row at one point.
“This is what Dylan does,” Ott said. “He plays extremely hard every single night, and he works extremely hard on his game. Those shots that he takes, it’s exactly what he does in his workouts.”
Brooks also did his job getting LeBron off his game, getting the 40-year-old to yell at him and the Suns bench after the third quarter, when the Lakers were down 19, 96-17. LeBron did stay in the game long enough in the fourth quarter to get to 10 points on the night, extending his double-digit scoring streak to 1,297 games.
Collin Gillespie carving out a role
The way teams playing the Lakers have been asking “Who’s No. 12?” about Jake LaRavia this season — or the way they were asking “Who is No. 15?” about Austin Reaves a season or two ago — Lakers fans were asking about Collin Gillespie on Monday.
The undrafted third-year player out of Villanova has been carving out a role in Phoenix this season and stepped up with 28 points, including hitting 8-of-14 from 3-point range on the night.
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“I was just being aggressive, taking what they were giving us, and it was a second night of back-to-back for them, so try to get out and run transition,” Gillespie said postgame. “We did a good job on defense to end in third quarter, and guys were finding me. So just taking what they’re giving us.”
Luka Doncic gets his, but Lakers’ defense concerning
Luka Doncic — the leading first-quarter scorer in the league this season, averaging 12.8 a game — upped that with 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting Monday. The Suns switched nearly everything with Doncic, so the Lakers tried to attack that by getting smaller guards on him.
The problem was that the Suns just outworked the Lakers all night long. For example, the Suns scored 40% of their 35 second quarter points off Lakers turnovers.
“If you don’t play hard against that team, you’re gonna get exposed,” Redick said postgame. “So, multiple times in the first half, we have a numbers advantage in transition on the defensive end and guys just run by us. We talked about matching their physicality. [We] didn’t do that to any extent at any point in the game.”
While the Lakers have gotten off to a fast start this season, their defense has been a concern — they were ranked 17th in the league coming into the game. Specifically, the Lakers entered the night with a disastrous 129.6 defensive rating when Doncic, LeBron James and Austin Reaves are on the court together. It’s an issue, but one the Lakers can overcome (at least in regular season games), so long as they don’t shoot themselves in the foot with turnovers and sloppy play.
“Turnovers, transition points, obviously on our home floor and against a disruptive defense like that, you can’t turn the ball over that much,” LeBron said. “[They were] pretty much all pick-sixes. They not only turned us over, they were able to convert.”
This was the first of five straight games the Lakers have against teams over .500. The Lakers need to take better care of the ball on Thursday in Toronto, another aggressive defensive team looking to get out and run with their athletes.